A Handy Little Gadget

"Couldn't find her way out of a paper bag". "Can't get there from here", "Doesn't know her right from her left"...o.k., that last one isn't quite true, but I have forever been known as having a horrible sense of direction.

I remember moving to Arizona where the entire city of Phoenix is mapped out like a perfect grid. Everything is North, South, East or West and should be perfectly simple to navigate. I got lost. All the time.

Right before we left the ridiculously easy to navigate streets of Phoenix, my husband surprised me with a Magellan RoadMate GPS. He understood that if there was no hope for me out West, there would certainly be no easy way for me to find my way around Columbia, S.C., where rhyme or reason was never incorporated into the street layouts.

I will be forever grateful for this little piece of equipment. Even though it was really only one road across the U.S. to get here, I probably wouldn't have even made it without the stupid thing!!

Seriously though, the Roadmate is probably one of the cheaper GPS systems you can buy and you get a lot for your money. Sure, there are things I would change about it, but it always gets me where I'm going and I wouldn't give it up easily.

In the following paragraphs, I'll try to help you make a decision about whether or not it's right for you.

The Good

The RoadMate has a large, touch-screen surface and offers voice instruction for directions. It is a little bigger than I'd like, but extremely lightweight and comes with a little attachment so that you can suction it to your car windshield for easy view of it's map.

Typically, I am the type of person who can pick up a piece of electronic equipment and use it with ease without any prior experience with it. So maybe I'm not the best person to rate the usability factor. However, seeing that my 7 year old son figured out how to use this thing without me helping him, I guess I am justified in saying that it's very user-friendly.

From the main menu, you have several options of what to do first. The Map feature lets you view a map of where you are at that particular moment. You can zoom in or out depending on your needs and you can change the view of the map as well.

The address feature lets you input a specific address of where you want to go and then routes you to it either by shortest time, shortest distance, most use of freeways or least use of freeways. This is the one I use most frequently.

The POI feature lets you input a point of interest freehand (typing in the name of the point of interest, such as Statue of Liberty) or search through a list of POI's based on category. This has come in handy many times when looking for a nearby restaurant or something fun to do.

The home feature lets you program your home address so that no matter where you are, you can quickly get back to where you came from without searching through your address book.

Speaking of, the address book feature does what you think it does. It saves all of the address that you've used in the past so that you can redirect yourself to them quickly.

The intersection feature is also a handy little tool for those times when you are unsure of an address but know whereabouts it is. You type in the two street names and it will lead you to where they intersect.

The trip computer feature lets you view the details of your current trip like speed and distance and save them if you really want to. I have never used it.

The trip planner feature is another option I have never used. I honestly don't know what it does specifically but I assume you can plan different stops on your trip. Please don't quote me on that though.

Then you have the options and configuration features which let you do just what they say...choose the options that you want (like English) and the configurations of your system (like map colors and options.

The Bad

There are plenty of features for this inexpensive device but occasionally I am annoyed by the way some of these work.

When you put in a specific address and route yourself to it, you are never quite sure if the computer is taking you the easiest way possible. Several times I have noticed it taking me out of the way to get to a certain point. For instance, I once tried to get to a certain highway that I knew perfectly well how to navigate to. I wanted to see the route the GPS was taking me, which was not the way I knew, so I followed it. I ended up going 5 miles out of my way and was not pleased. Another example was when I was traveling from New Jersey to S.C., heading through D.C. The instructions actually had me getting off the major highway, traveling through downtown D.C., getting on another highway and eventually getting back on the one I was originally on. Getting through D.C. itself proved difficult and I was there for about an hour in traffic. I was extremely peeved, as I could have easily stayed on the highway I was on. It might have been longer in distance, but it would have been much shorter in time.

The POI interest feature could use some work as well. It does have a lot of categories like restaurants, shopping, tourist attractions, etc., but I'd like to see it have more. I've also put in "Walmart" and received a message back stating "No POI found within a hundred miles". We all know that wasn't accurate at all! I have yet to update the unit so I don't know if doing so will fix that little snafu or not.

Updating might take care of another little annoyance. Sometimes roads are not updated. I was visiting my brother in Cape Cod once where rotaries are rampant. It had been years since I visited him, so I only vaguely remembered the way. I did remember that I had two rotaries to go around and the GPS confirmed this. However, when it instructed me that the next rotary was approaching, it never came. Because I didn't turn when it said to, it re-routed me all through town and it took an extra half hour to get to his house. Turns out, the rotary had been gone for about 5 years!!! I though that was a bit unacceptable.

One final thing I would like to see fixed on the unit is the time it takes to track the satellites. I've had to wait a good 5 minutes before it recognized where exactly I was, which means I basically had to pull over because I didn't know where to go.

The Ugly

There is one MAJOR pitfall with the unit that I've had happen. In the year and 1/2 I've owned it, it's failed to work twice. It just simply would not turn on. I tried resetting it but...nothing. I was in unfamiliar territory when it happened one time and I simply had to pull over and wait for it to work again. I had pulled over at a McDonalds that had a playplace and let the kids play for an hour. Finally, it worked. I don't know what happened to it but it was very discombobulating to be stuck without it!

All in all though, I'd say I've been very happy to have this little device. It's so much better than writing directions down from Mapquest. It's kept me from getting lost numerous times and I'm grateful for it. If they just fixed some of the bad features, it would be perfect.